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How Did I Get Here?

Greetings all.

Been lurking for a while, trying to gather some ideas and it just struck me: How did I end up getting involved with hammocks?

Well, Officer, it was like this:

After I retired from Oregon Department of Transportation a few years ago, I started going on vacation trips alone -- my wife and I share a lot of interests, but there are a number of things I enjoy, she does not. So we split up occasionally. Horrible airline luggage handling convinced me to quit checking bags back in the 1990s, which meant I converted to backpacking with hands firmly on my stuff at all times, long ago.

With more traveling, I started to lighten things up. A lot. I finally found myself traveling with one pack and I eventually found myself with a carefully loaded backpack ready and waiting to go at all times. (Spontaneous trekking is a lot of fun).

By the middle of this last July, I found myself carrying only the following: A netbook computer, a phone, two extra shirts, light pants, poncho & windbreaker, underwear, a med kit, a snack kit, half-liter roll up plastic containers, ultra-light sleeping bag and some extra room for stuff of all kinds.

Then I saw a hammock display at an REI and guess what?

Yep, hammock. tarp, hardware for setup and what have you.

I had given up camping back twenty years ago because I could not ever sleep on the ground, making the trips a kind of wandering fugue-state horror extravaganza. Now I can sleep.

(Cold though. Which is why I'm here along with learning about gear, places, people and fun).

I currently have a ENO D with a couple of Hennessy tarps that are giving me fits here and there. (Oregon weather is once again sliding toward rain, rain and more rain and a lot of it is sideways) I'm currently waiting for an ordered Hennessy Monsoon tarp.

It's just too bad that Susan (my wife) and spent some great time in Utah, Arizona and Nevada this spring and we COULD have camped, but I was ignorant of the entire hammock concept at the time. We watched the Venus transit just outside Williams, AZ.